German parliament in bid to defund far-right political party

Germany's upper house of parliament, the Bundesrat, has submitted a draft law attempting to cut out public funding to the far-right National Democratic Party of Germany (NPD), German media Spiegel Online reported on Friday.

The draft, seeking to contain right-wing leanings by blocking the government funding, would need a two-thirds majority in both the Bundesrat and Germany's lower house, the Bundestag.

As the current law stands, the German government allocates a certain budget of subsidies to each legally-recognized political party, judging on the number of seats they gained in regional, federal and European elections.

Accordingly, the NPD received 1.3 million euros (1.4 million U.S. dollars) in 2015.

The proposal by Bundesrat was also widely seen as a follow-up measure after the Bundesrat failed earlier this year to get the NPD banned in Germany's political life.

In January, Germany's supreme constitutional court rejected the proposed ban on NPD, citing that although its members were "in favor of an authoritarian state housing an ethnically defined national community" it was "too ineffective" to pose a real threat to democracy.

The NPD, often accused of having neo-Nazi links, has never crossed the national 5 percent threshold necessary to enter the legislatives at the federal level. However, the party recently gained momentum through its radical stance amid the refugee crisis. Endit